NorthStar launched this indestructible all-in-one system in 1982.
The Advantage combined the well known (at the time) NorthStar 5.25 floppy disc sub-system with a high-resolution display and a durable keyboard. The Advantage also had it's own bus with it's own set of optional I/O card and a 8088 co-processor card for comparability with the newly released IBM PC software. Sadly, the card was delivered with MS-DOS ver.1 which wasn't compatible with the IBM-PC PC-DOS and very few programs were developed for this OS.
Despite some interesting features - High resolution graphics display, 8 and 16-bit software compatibility - and a proven reliability, the Advantage never really competed with Apple and IBM-PC systems
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More information from Jim who worked for NorthStar from 1979: Kentucky Fried Computer (KFC) was the original name of the company in their garage building stage, and was quickly changed to NorthStar when they found commercial potential.
One great feature of the Advantage was that it had an IBM Selectric (as in typewriters) keyboard. Very high quality, and familiar to typists. There was a 16 bit add-in card that ran generic MSDOS 1. The display allowed to run graphic games like Asteroid, and could display foreign character sets. Many were sold outside the US.
It also had networking cards, called NorthNet (I don't remember the protocol) to link many Advantages together, when this was just a dream for IBM.
As you said, it came out about the time of the IBM PC, which pretty much killed it, mostly because people didn't understand the technology.
T. N French adds:
Early versions of NorthNet were SNA None Return to Zero Inverted (NRZI). Netbios came along. NorthStar also developed an add-on that ran PC-DOS.
The hard sectored drives were notorious for getting out of alignment. I think that is what really killed the system (PC-DOS and IBM didn't help)
I was working for GBC at the time and we re-badged the product line (Advantage = System 9 and Horizon = System 12).
Hard disks were available with 5, 10 and 30 Mb runnig MFM.
Please consider donating your old computer / videogame system to Old-Computers.com or one of our partners from anywhere in the world (Europe, America, Asia, etc.).
I worked for the University of Maryland European Division when these first came out and was charged with maintenance and repair for these. Great memories from 1982 to 1988
Friday 9th June 2023
Maurice Huffman (United States)
I bought my NS Advantage in Hong Kong for approximately £3000 including a daisy wheel printer and Wordstar as I needed to write and edit reports for the Outward Bound School in HK when I was Captain of the Brigantine Ji Fung. I took it to sea with me and it survived. It was the first computer at the OB school but when I asked for it to be considered as essential equipment and therefore Income Tax deductible my boss said a computer was unnecessary - Hard to imagine now. My wife was a Touch Typer and could typed quicker than the computer could put the text up on the screen so she had to slow down to let it catch up. I now have it stored in my garage as a bit of history… Happy Days.
Friday 23rd September 2022
Peter Gasson (North Wales, UK)
I have 2 Northstar computers with all manuals,heaps of floppy discs,110/240 transformers,Also have a heap of spares,circut boards and other related stuff.Message me for details.
Thursday 3rd February 2022
simon milton (France)
NAME
Advantage
MANUFACTURER
Northstar
TYPE
Professional Computer
ORIGIN
U.S.A.
YEAR
1982
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
None
KEYBOARD
Full-stroke 79 keys with function keys and numeric keypad
CPU
Z80 or 8088
SPEED
3.5 Mhz. (Z80)
CO-PROCESSOR
8084 for display and disk management
RAM
64 KB expandable to 256 KB
VRAM
32 KB - 20 KB actually used - Extra 12 KB was reserved for
